1. The Field of the Invention
This invention relates to containers and, more particularly, to novel systems and methods for re-usable, knock-down boxes.
2. The Background Art
General merchandise boxes may be packed with a selection of various products. In certain circumstances, a box may be filled with articles all constituting the same product. Nevertheless, general merchandise shipping boxes are typically of two types. The first type is polymer resin crates. These crates may be sealed boxes or other configurations.
The other, and most common general merchandise box is a corrugated fiber board or “cardboard” box. These boxes are very similar to the corrugated cardboard boxes often purchased for moving household goods. Four flaps form the bottom, and are folded and taped to seal the bottom of the box. The box is sealed with the similar, often identical, array of top flaps. The top flaps may be connected to one another with small connecting members of the basic material of the box, or may be free standing, and completely separated.
Typically, when such a box is filled, the bottom has been folded and taped in order to stabilize the box from a flattened condition to a box shape. A user must either fold the top flaps down around the box, or leave the flaps in the position they tend to take. In some circumstances, the flaps remain rigid and pointing upward, parallel to the box sides from which they proceed. In other circumstances, the flaps continue to flap at random away from the opening of the box, and more often toward the opening of the box.
Users have great difficulty in filling such boxes. The top flaps tend to form “stand offs” by their very dimensions. If the flaps are connected to one another or otherwise still standing vertically, then a user must bend over to reach down into the box to place anything on the bottom of the box. Meanwhile, if the flaps are extending away from the box walls, then they form a horizontal stand off pushing the user away from the interior of the box where items must be placed.
Finally, flaps typically tend to fold inward, and thus return to their equilibrium position angling inward and obstructing access to the interior of the box. Thus, each item placed must require of the user to either hold the flaps out of the way, or to reach in and pull the flaps back in order to add each respective item.
Conventional boxes have other difficulties. Plastic or polymer resin crates are often damaged, scraped, scratched, and otherwise rendered undesirable. They may need to be scrubbed periodically with high-pressure and high-temperature fluids, such as water, soap, and the like. Meanwhile, they tend to be quite expensive, and when damaged must often be destroyed.
Conventional cardboard boxes are not without their issues. Typically, they may only be used one time. Thereafter, they are immediately cut down, baled into bales, and returned to a paper manufacturing company for recycling. The plastic tape used to seal the boxes must be removed from the mushy vats of recycled fibers after the box material has been thoroughly soaked, separated, and returned into a slurry of paper pulp. Removal of the strings of tape is necessarily problematic.
Boxes secured with staples and other fasteners, glues, and the like each have their own difficulties. Ultimately, recycling is not re-use, and re-use is virtually impossible. For example, to reuse a box, that box must be transported from the receiver who originally unloaded the contents out of the box, and return to some sort of supplier for reuse. The nature of boxes is such that their volume is disproportionately very large compared to their weight. Unless the boxes can be dismantled, they cannot be reused.
Stripping off tape, tearing out staples, and like basically amount to destroying the box. So much damage happens to the structure of the box that reuse is impractical. By impractical, reuse is so horribly expensive and of low yield that recycling works better. The amount of energy, shipping, and labor required to reuse boxes, particularly where they may have various random sizes is simply not typically done.
What is needed is a box that can be used multiple times, but which can be discarded when it begins to fail structurally, or when it has been soiled or otherwise rendered unsuitable for reuse. It would be an advance in the art, for example, to provide a fiber board box that can be shipped to a user location in a knocked-down configuration. It would be a further advance in the art to have the box completely connected and sealed at all locations except the lid closure. It would be a further advance in the art to provide such a box that could be easily erected to an assembled condition with a minimum of effort and movement.
It would be a further advance in the art if such a box had a lid, and other parts that could be completely removed from the work space of a user trying to fill the box. For example, it would be an advance in the art to remove or eliminate flaps that would otherwise obstruct a user's access to the box.
It would be a further advance in the art to provide a box that can be knocked-down without having to remove tape, glue, staples, or any other fasteners in order to return the box to its original knocked-down configuration for shipping.
It would be a further advance in the art to form a sturdy box that is strong enough to serve, tough enough to withstand a certain amount of use and abuse, and which could be assembled and disassembled without tools for use and reuse.